In All My Dreams I Drown
by Amelia Island
Summary: The Enchanted Forest hides deeper secrets, but is Elsa ready to uncover the truth—especially in regards to her new consort? (Elsa/Human!Nokk)
1. Chapter 1

It was early afternoon when Elsa strolled into camp wearing a preoccupied expression. Honeymaren paused in stacking a pyramid of firewood and watched the slender figure advance. It was remarkable to her the way the snowy-haired woman moved through the bustle and activity of the Northuldra's encampment, unseeing, her gaze turned inward to her own thoughts; yet she avoided all collisions, and eventually found her way to Honeymaren's shelter.

"Elsa." Honeymaren greeted the unearthly beauty as if the visit had been expected all along, and returned to piling up her cord of wood. "How do you find yourself? Care to sit a while?"

"Honeymaren, have you seen the Nokk? He isn't answering my call."

Honeymaren paused. She appeared to meditate on something she was tempted to say. Her eyes even darted right a few times, trying to draw attention to the pail of water near her fire ring, and Elsa's eyes to it, but Elsa didn't follow. Finally, the Northuldra woman gave up; she straightened, and chanced the question: "Isn't he just… in the water?"

She sounded just as foolish as she'd feared, but it was a fair assumption. Elsa's delicate brows drew together thoughtfully. "That's what I assumed. But it seems that, like the other spirits, he can't be everywhere at once."

It hadn't escaped Elsa's notice from the beginning that the Northuldra referred to the Nokk as _he. _She had adopted the same association, conscious or not, upon their first meeting, when they had clashed amid the cataclysmal waves of the Dark Sea. She had known his name, too; it was a gift that had been given her, without words, at the conclusion of their fight, and the formation of their friendship.

Now, she sat with Honeymaren as the other woman continued about her chores. While the other had no advice to give on the day's particular snarl, she had plenty of encouragement to offer, and Elsa appreciated her steady monologue. She had taken it for granted until now, perhaps, that any of the forest's spirits would be available to commune with her when she willed it—they surely had their own errands to attend to within the realm. Had it been selfishness to assume otherwise?

"I think I'll go for a walk instead of a ride," Elsa concluded eventually. She rose, and embraced Honeymaren, who rose with her. "Thanks for speaking with me."

"Come by my fire tonight?" Honeymaren suggested.

Elsa flexed a shy, appreciative smile. She doubted there would ever be a day in her life when a social invitation didn't take her by pleasant surprise. "I wouldn't miss it," she replied.

"I'm sure you'll find the Nokk before then." Honeymaren grinned.

Thus encouraged, Elsa started off into the woods. For a while as she walked, Gale accompanied her, rifling through her sweeping skirts and braiding ember-red leaves into her hair with indexterous fingers; then, as was their wont, the air spirit bored with their doting and gusted on.

Elsa came upon a stream eventually, and followed its tinkling waters north toward a mightier origin. The distant roar of falling water announced her destination before she saw it, and she picked up her pace, eager to behold one of her favorite waterfalls in the region. Honeymaren had informed her that the tumbling water glassed over in the winter time, but that the falls would still flow steadily on beneath its translucent crust of ice until spring. It wasn't cold enough yet to have frozen, but Elsa thought to visit a last time before winter crystallized its roilingpassage down the tall cliffs.

But when she arrived at the clearing, it was Elsa who froze. There was someone already here; a figure crouched by the shore of the pond amid the smoothed, tumbled stones. The mist rising off the pond obscured the petitioner's identity, but she made out the bent head, and the wide breadth of masculine shoulders. The form was shaped like a man, but it was a form unmistakably held by water; it took the landscape that surrounded it into itself and transformed it, capturing and reshaping the surrounding trees, minimizing and bending the shape of the falls like a ribbon. Elsa saw her own reflection in it from a distance, a tiny white figure undulating at the tree line like a puff of pure smoke. The figure's blue depths were easily, almost intimately, perceived, and moved ceaselessly with an alien life that could not be said to breathe, but _lived _all the same.

The clouds broke overhead in the same instant that the being moved. The muscles of the man's back rippled, a reflection of the light sliding between them and pooling in each crater. Elsa caught her breath. She was aware then that she had trespassed on a private moment, even if she couldn't as easily define why or how she had reached the conclusion. It simply was. Whatever, or _whoever,_ she had come across in this silent scene had expected to be alone.

And now he was aware of her. She watched as a disturbance purled up the liquid surface of his back; it reminded her of a discomfited cat twitching its awareness of being watched, or a stone disrupting the unbroken surface of a pond.

"My apologies," she offered quickly. "I didn't mean to interrupt you. I—"

Elsa took a half-step back as the being rose. He tossed his head, and his liquid mane cascaded down his back, before falling over one sloped shoulder. As he turned to her, Elsa glimpsed the definitions of a proud profile: the strong forehead, the deep brows, the pronounced, aquiline nose that seemed almost Arendellian in its makeup. A slanted, glowing pair of pools regarded her—pools she recognized now as eyes—and the woman who had surpassed being queen nearly tripped over her own sandaled heels as the power behind that stare threatened to bowl her over.

But she didn't. She stood tall, on what suddenly felt like unsteady ground, as the taller being flowed toward her… each step _nearly_ defined, before the rising water chasing along his calves coalesced into the next graceful stride. Elsa's stricken gaze moved up the apparition's body… then immediately snapped to his face. Her cheeks flamed as if _she _held the spirit of fire contained within her. With each step the naiad took, that containment threatened to break.

He didn't have a body; not in any corporeal sense. And yet, he was still, quite indisputably, naked.

In that moment, far away in Arendelle, Olaf was interested to find steam rising off him in waves.

* * *

**A/N: I don't know if this idea has been done yet, but after reading a bit more on the ****Nøkk from Scandinavian mythology, I knew I had to give it a go.**

**Let me know if you are interested in reading more of this pairing!**


	2. Chapter 2

2

* * *

"You _knew _Nokk could become human?"

Honeymaren's grin was just a little too wide for Elsa to feel as if they were equals in this conversation—and like the smile wasn't just a little bit at her expense. "Of course! Didn't anyone tell you?"

"You're positively simpering. And no," Elsa clarified, lacing her white hands in her lap to keep her fingers from twisting anxiously. Poise came more naturally now in these woods than it ever had in all the vast rooms of Arendelle; so why was it suddenly so hard to hold onto composure? "I wasn't aware. But something tells me _you _already know that."

Honeymaren's smile could have charmed the wild honey from its comb, and given it extra sweetness besides. The two women were currently sharing an outdoor fireside, compliments of Bruni; other fires sprang up around the Northuldra encampment as the spirit made his rounds, meteoring his little body between piles of tinder while the children chased after him. "I was wondering when he would decide to show himself to you," Honeymaren admitted. "It seemed his decision to make, you know?"

Both women turned their heads then to scrutinize the third figure seated a conspicuous distance from the fire. Nokk shifted his liquid countenance a little when he noticed their attentions redirect toward him, though it was not a retreat. Never a retreat.

Bruni's frenzied trajectory from fire to fire brought him to rest beside Nokk on the log. The water spirit leaned to look at his companion, curious. Elsa could all too clearly imagine the snort of surprise that might have formerly emanated from his nostrils. Bruni's tongue lolled, and he gazed adoringly up at his fellow spirit. Evidently _he_ had no trouble recognizing the Nokk no matter what form he took.

"Does Bruni also...?" Elsa began hesitantly.

"By the spirits, no!" Honeymaren burst into laughter, rocking so far back on the log she overbalanced. Elsa sent an effortless ramp of snow up behind her to steady her from toppling completely.

"When you invoke the spirits, you also invoke me," she reminded. She didn't think it was _that _absurd an assumption to make considering all she now knew. To her surprise, Bruni wasn't instantly drawn to her ice. Instead, the salamander snuggled in close to Nokk's thigh, and the other spirit—the man—put out a hand to soothe his friend's temperature now that campfire duty was concluded. The unfamiliar heat in Elsa's cheeks was not so easily extinguished, and she looked away. To look away from Nokk was, unfortunately, to once more meet the amusement in Honeymaren's eyes. "What do I do now?" Elsa wondered in her soft rasp of a voice.

Honey seemed to ponder Nokk. Or maybe she only pretended an assessment to make Elsa feel better. "Now?" she repeated. "Now I guess you really get to know one another."

_Easy for her to say, _Elsa thought despairingly as she made a tour of the camp later that evening. But why shouldn't it be easy for her to wrap her head around? Nokk was imbued with his own magic, same as her—and she had changed her form, hadn't she, when her powers awoke?

_But there is a stark difference between his form and the forms of the other men of the Enchanted Forest... emphasis on 'stark'._

Nokk flowed along silently beside her as she made her social rounds, posture proud and erect, a statuesque testament to all the male form could be. He was taller than the tallest man milling around camp by at least a head (or did one still count in hands?), and not without features Elsa thought distinctly his own: the long hair, the Roman nose, the tilted, glowing eyes.

He caught her looking. More than once. Elsa's embarrassment compounded with every look chanced and returned. She had no idea how to speak to him, nor even an expectation that her awkward attempts at conversation would be returned. She strongly suspected they would not.

"Elsa!" A knot of working Northuldra woodsmen came out of the treeline, hailing her with what hands were free between them.

Elsa returned the gesture, aware that they also did not seem surprised by the sight of her companion. "Have you already revealed yourself to everyone in the Enchanted Forest except for me?" Her first attempt at conversation with the Nokk died on her lips as she turned back to him. He was staring past her at the men filtering back into camp with a hard, fathoms-deep expression. She still wasn't sure of his moods, but it looked almost as if he was concentrating—

A sudden upswell of his form prompted Elsa to step back. When the water abated, she saw that he now emulated the dress the other men wore: a short-hemmed gákti, sashed at the waist, along with pants, and boots lined with sea foam that looked the exact consistency of sheep's wool. He hadn't quite got the collar right—it plunged open nearly to his belt, exposing much of his well-formed chest. "Very dashing," Elsa complimented with a fond twist of a smile. Now that Nokk wasn't walking the camp in a complete state of disrobe, she found some of her initial shyness had ebbed. She stepped to him with the intention of drawing his shirt closed for him, before deciding against it. Perhaps the Nokk had his own sense of fashion.

The thought amused Elsa, though now she had stepped nearer to him with lifted hands and no particular goal in mind. Nokk watched her curiously as she let her ice-white fingers settle on either side of his collar; from beneath them, decorative rimes of frost crawled into existence, spinning themselves into patterns that wove an intricate embroidery.

She was still learning his expressions, but she thought Nokk looked please by her addition.

"Elsa! Nokk!" Honeymaren's voice called over to them.

Elsa whipped around, feeling shame for she knew not what; it was how she had felt once being caught leaving her room as a child by her parents. She sensed the cool kiss of water along her neck, and was vaguely aware without looking that Nokk had lifted a piece of her hair off her shoulder. She turned to gauge his intentions, then quickly turned back again, cheeks coloring, when she realized he had raised it to his face. Was he taking her scent? Laying his lips to it? Was he more equine or man in that moment? "Y-yes?" she stammered in the direction she thought she remembered was Honey's.

The raven-haired woman waved to her. "The children have a new game they want to teach you! Come over here!"

"What's one more new thing today?" Elsa posed the question rhetorically, which might have been the same as asking Nokk. Her fellow spirit released her hair, allowing it to collapse, damp and heavy, across her bare shoulder. Elsa shivered.

Knowing herself, it certainly wasn't from the cold.


End file.
